The moral foundations of foreign aid

This article considers the moral grounds for giving aid to developing states and their citizens. After reviewing the current level of foreign aid, the article addresses three principal questions. (a) Do moral obligations arise from considerations of humanity, corrective justice, or distributive justice?; (b) do the obligations and entitlements fall on individuals or on states?; and (c) how much are the rich obliged to transfer to the poor? The article concludes that obligations of humanity and corrective justice require developed states and their citizens to give far more foreign aid than current practices disclose.